Tag: stuffed pork loin

Geeez…..it feels like forever since I’ve written a post!! (Ten days…I just went back and counted) I apologize for that. Right after I made that post, I got pretty sick, laid up for three days. Then last weekend we had guests in from out of town and we were crazy busy going out to eat, girls went shopping, guys went to Top Golf, went out to eat some more, went to see The Fray in concert and a whole bunch of other things. Like I said….busy. But last night I just had to fire up the Egg to do something. A quick scavenger hunt into the freezer produced this…

4lb Pork Loin

Well, that’s too much for Mrs. G and I to eat, so as you can see it got cut into half and half those got cut into four pork chops for later. That left us with about 2lb pork loin (still too much for us to eat, but oh well. That’s what leftovers are for). I took that 2lber and with some fancy schmancy knifework we had this….

Flattened out

Are you impressed with my knifework? If yes, then thank you, you are too kind. If not, cut me some slack. That’s the first time I’ve ever done that before. I don’t think it turned out to bad.

On to the stuffing. I know that a lot of people pair pork with apples. Or maybe raisins (not sure on that one) or some other fruit. Well, Mrs. G doesn’t really do fruit, especially mixed in with meat. So we weren’t gonna roll (pun intended) that way. We started off with some cream cheese and some sautéed spinach (yes, I also sautéed spinach for the first time last night. All kinds of firsts last night) and some sautéed mushrooms and onions.

Some of the stuffing

By this time, with all the sautéing, I needed a drink. Then we added some sun-dried tomatoes and some garlic and herb goat cheese.

More stuff

Once we had spread out all the ingredients, it was time to roll that bad boy up. After you roll up your pork tenderloin, you could go ahead and cook it, but wouldn’t it be better if it was wrapped in some bacon first? And maybe some Dizzy Pig Swamp Venom?

Now we’re ready for the grill!

The pork loin went on to the Egg at 350F.

Egg @ 350F with a drip pan

But man cannot live on meat alone, so I decided to try another first for me….Hasselback Potatoes!! These are something I first saw years ago on the Barbecue Bible, but just never got around to ’em.

Hasselback Potatoes

There’s all kinds of history on these spuds. I know, cuz I looked it up yesterday….and then forgot it all. So if you want to know about them, then Google is your friend. He’ll tell you all you want to know and more, I’m sure. I kept mine simple with some butter, salt and pepper and a lil bit of thyme.

Taters joining the pork loin

You might have noticed the drip pan disappeared. Originally, I had my Egg set up indirectly with the placesetter and the drip pan on top of that and then the grate. Let’s just say that I got started a lil later on this cook than I intended, and Mrs. G and I were getting hungry and it was getting late. So to speed things up a bit, we pulled the placesetter, and then used the BGE extended grate on top of the original grate just to get a little height above the coals. Sometimes you just got to improvise.

So after an unknown amount of time (aren’t I being helpful on this cook) and an uncountable number of bourbon and cokes (that might be why I’m so helpful), we pulled the pork once it reached 145F. You are aware that they lowered the safe cooking temp of pork last year? They being the USDA (United States Dept. of Agriculture). I really should have pulled it at 140 and let it carry over, but oh well.

Ain’t she a beaut, Clark?

Time to slice that boy up and see what we got.

Sliced.

Look at all that goodness tucked in there.

Is that making you hungry?

Enough picture taking. We plated the pork loin up with the potatoes and a salad and dug in.

Plated up

Turned out pretty good, even if it took longer than I had planned. The pork was juicy and as you can see from the pictures, it even developed a bit of a smoke ring. The ingredients in the stuffing played well off each other, none really overpowering the other. Each bite gave you just a little bit of a different taste. I do think next time, I will skip the cream cheese. That really didn’t work out well. Extra calories and a flavor that really didn’t belong. Maybe sub in some other kind of cheese or use more of the goat cheese. All in all, a pretty tasty meal.